


swimming downstream

by tusktooth



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: F/F, Fate & Destiny, First Meetings, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 00:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tusktooth/pseuds/tusktooth
Summary: When Matteo forgets about his date with David, he sends Sara to his apartment to go stall for him. When the door opens, however, she finds that the only one home is David’s roommate, Leonie. Driven by chance, the two of them take the night for themselves.





	swimming downstream

**Author's Note:**

> i've been wanting to write a leonie x sara fic 5ever so here ya go gays  
a MILLION thanks to the amazing artist i worked with for this, [koedder-du](http://koedder-du.tumblr.com/)  
[come say howdy on my druck blog](http://jonasmatteo.tumblr.com/)

Sara could see the canal from her dormitory window. Sure, it wasn’t exactly the river and she could only see a sliver of it, but she enjoyed the view nonetheless and day after day she sat in her windowsill and watched for a few minutes. Sometimes ducks would swim by or somebody in a kayak would make their way through the canal. If she was lucky, she would see a ferry full of tourists, enjoying the city of Berlin on their time off. She didn’t know quite what made her enjoy the view so much. Maybe it was the moment of peace where nothing mattered but the view of the canal. Maybe it was the sight of people finding enjoyment in the city. Or maybe she just liked the idea of it. The water wasn’t supposed to flow that way originally until people had built the canal, which was now used for ducks and fish and boats. The thought of everything being in the hands of the universe was terrifying and Sara felt some comfort in seeing the visual proof that people could carve out their own destiny, that they could choose for themselves.

The sound of her door bursting open shook her from her thoughts and made her turn away from the window to where Matteo stood wearing what had to be the ugliest sweater imaginable.

“Please tell me you aren’t going out with David wearing that,” she said with a frown, but after thinking for a moment corrected herself, “Actually, do. He’d probably be into it.”

Matteo furrowed his eyebrows. “What? I came in here to ask you about the linear algebra homework.”

She grimaced. “I haven’t started it yet and I don’t even want to know how bad it is. If you so much as say the word ‘eigenvector’ to me I might just combust.”

He looked down to the notebook in his hand and back up at her. “Okay. Never mind then.”

Sara picked up her phone to see how much time had passed her by only to find it was nearly seven. She had been sitting there a while. No ferries today.

“When are you going out with David?” she asked Matteo curiously. David had mentioned their date the last time she had seen him and Sara was eager to know what he had planned. Sure, Sara wasn’t exactly in a relationship at the moment, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t live vicariously through her closest friends.

“No, we’re going out on Friday,” he told her.

Sara blinked for a moment. “Matteo, it  _ is  _ Friday.”

He dropped his notebook on the ground. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “When does it start?”

“7,” he replied.

“Shit.”

He ran his hand through his hair and paced around frantically for a moment before pointing a finger at Sara. “You need to go over there and stall.”

“Me?” she asked. “I love hanging out with David, but you should just get ready and go.”

“I have to fix my hair,” he told her.

“Your hair always looks the same,” she replied. “I have never in my life seen you change anything about it.”

“Please, Sara,” he pleaded.

She crossed her arms over her chest, but when she saw the terror in his eyes, she dropped them. “Fine, I’ll go stall while you finish getting ready. But, for the record, David loves you no matter how your hair looks.”

David went to a different school, but his apartment was still only about a five-minute walk away. Sara had only been there once and, from what she recalled, it was a pretty nice place for student housing. The decor had been nice and it really felt lived in rather than just temporary. He lived there with his older sister and some other girl that was in a few of his classes, but Sara hadn’t had a chance to meet either of them when she’d visited in the past.

When she arrived at his door, she knocked politely, shivering just a little. She should have thought to bring a light jacket at the very least. It was November, so a light sweater no longer was going to quite cut it.

The door finally opened and it wasn’t David who stood behind it, but a girl that she didn’t quite recognize. She was on the short side, with long brown hair that fell straight down her back and the brightest blue eyes that Sara had ever seen. Considering what David looked like, Sara supposed that there was some truth to the notion that beautiful people kept beautiful company.

“Hi?” the girl asked after a moment or so.

Shit. Sara hadn’t realized that she forgot to speak. “Hi,” she echoed.

The girl raised an eyebrow. “Are you looking for something?”

Sara nodded.

“If it’s because Kiki lost her cat again, it’s not here this time, but you should tell her to keep better track of it,” the girl told her. “I swear, it gets out like every other day.”

“No, it’s not that,” Sara said, pinching herself to pull her back from whatever trance she seemed to have fallen into. “I’m looking for David. Is he home?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

Her eyes widened. “Crap! Did he leave for his date already? I thought Matteo was supposed to pick him up but he's obviously not here yet.”

“David and Laura went out to dinner,” the girl told her. “He and Matteo were planning on going out tonight?”

“I thought he mentioned it when he was at ours the other day, but maybe I’m making it up,” Sara said, running a hand over her face in quasi-embarrassment. “Matteo didn’t seem to remember having one either, so I guess I could have been wrong. He sent me here to stall while he got ready.”

“Oh, I’m sure you were right. David tends to be quite forgetful as well.” She laughed a little as she threw the door open. “You can come in if you’d like. It’s starting to get cold out and I made a pot of tea anyway, so why not share it.”

Sara smiled and stepped inside. “Thanks. I’m Sara.”

The girl grinned back at her. “I’m Leonie. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Sara said as she made her way over to the couch, texting Matteo to let him know that it seemed that either David hadn’t remembered their date either or they hadn’t had one to begin with.

A few moments later, Leonie returned with two steaming mugs of tea in hand, a small bag of sugar under her arm, and a spoon in her mouth facing outward. After setting everything down on the coffee table she spoke. “I wasn’t sure exactly how you liked your tea, so I just brought the sugar back for you. I can get milk as well if you’d like.”

Sara shook her head and reached for the sugar. “No milk for me. I do have a bit of a sweet tooth though, so I always put two spoonfuls of sugar in.”

“Really?” she asked. “That’s how I like it too!”

“What a coincidence,” Sara laughed. “Next you’re going to tell me that your favorite show is  _ Dark  _ or something.”

Leonie’s smile widened. “It is.”

“ _ Oh my god _ .”

“I’m going to smack David for never introducing us,” she said between sips of her tea. “We were clearly put on this Earth to be best friends. Maybe he was afraid of the competition.”

“I’d say the same about Matteo, but I’m sure he just wouldn’t think to introduce the two of us,” Sara replied.

“He doesn’t like me much anyway,” Leonie told her. “We went to school together when we were younger and I dated one of his friends. The break up was messy and I was kind of a dick to them. I think I more than made amends for it when I introduced him to David, though.”

“I don’t think he dislikes you,” Sara assured her. “I mean, he’s never said anything bad about you and I’m sure he’s grateful that you introduced them. I mean, they’re like totally soulmates.”

“I didn’t really buy the whole soulmate thing until them,” Leonie admitted. “The idea that people could truly be like two halves of a whole, driven by fate to fall together, it always  _ sounded  _ nice. I just could never bring myself to believe it. But then David and Matteo started dating and, well, they really complete each other, you know? It’s like something in David was missing and then he met Matteo and everything just clicked into place. I didn’t know Matteo super well, but I’m under the impression that it was a similar experience for him as well, based on what I was able to observe.”

Sara nodded. “He’s definitely been different in the best way ever since the two of them met.”

“It’s beautiful, really,” Leonie said, setting her mug onto the table. “Having such a wholeness in your life.”

“Do you ever think it could happen to you?” Sara inquired. It had seemed to her that the two of them had clicked upon meeting, but it was different, probably. They were practically strangers.

“Do I think I have a soulmate?” Leonie asked, paused for a moment for Sara to nod. “Well, I suppose so, seeing as it happened with the two of them. Though, I’ve always felt that I can be whole on my own. Like, I don’t necessarily need another half, though one is surely welcome. I’m not sure that I’d be able to tell when it happened, though. If the experience is supposed to be organic, I don’t know if I’d notice its occurrence until it was too late and she had passed me by.”

It was stupid, but Sara’s heart skipped a beat at the word ‘she.’ Sure, just because Leonie was attracted to woman, a lesbian most likely, didn’t mean that she would feel any attraction toward Sara, but there was a glimmer of hope inside her. Maybe a girl that seemed that perfect could fall for a girl like her.

Sara bit her lip for a moment before speaking, trying to determine exactly how to phrase her response. “I do think there’s a certain degree of choice to it, though. Like you can be drawn to somebody, but being with them had to be a conscious choice on both of your parts. Like, for example, Matteo and David choose to be together every day. Sure, their relationship just seems to  _ work  _ and is certainly mutually beneficial for them, as it should be, but it isn’t a result of only fate. There are easy times and there are hard times and, through both of them, Matteo and David choose their love for each other, day after day.”

Leonie seemed to ponder it for a moment before smiling. “I think you’re right. Also, speaking of, did you text Matteo to let him that David wasn’t home.”

She nodded. “I’m sure he’ll give me shit about being wrong when I come home, even if the case was that both of them forgot the date was happening.”

“Then, do you want to go somewhere?” Leonie asked. “It’s a Friday, the night is young, and, though it is a tiny bit chilly, the weather isn’t exactly unbearable.”

“Go where?” Sara asked.

Leonie shrugged. “We’ve already talked a bit about fate. Let’s just start walking and see where our feet end up.”

A tiny voice started chattering away in the back of Sara’s mind.  _ This is a ridiculous idea. You’ve only just met her today. What if she’s taking you out to kill you? And even if she weren’t, it’s not like the two of you have any sort of plan for this. What if you wind up somewhere dangerous? What if someone offers you illicit drugs? What if you get attacked? God, what is she offers you illicit drugs and then attacks you when you’re weakest. _

Another voice in Sara’s minds screamed  _ YES! _

Smiling widely, she chose to listen to the second voice. “I’d love to.”

For a while, they just walked around the city and chatted. Sara learned that Leonie was studying visual art like David was, but that she preferred sculpting as a medium rather than drawing or painting. She learned that Leonie had a complicated relationship with her parents after coming out, but overall they were supportive, even if it had taken them some time to come around. Sara learned about Leonie’s dog, Kassi, who she missed so much because her apartment had a strict no pet policy, so the dog was stuck in Hamburg with her parents.

In turn, Sara told her about her own life. She told her about how she never thought she would go into engineering, but how she discovered in high school that not only was she really good at math, but that she genuinely enjoyed it too. She told her about how the time around her Abi exams had been really stressful for her, what with her family having money problems, her coming to terms with her bisexuality, and the exams themselves, but that she was happy for those struggles because it had morphed her into a stronger and wiser person. She told her that her favorite color was mocha brown and that she was afraid to tell people because who the hell liked brown?

They told one another things that they had never told anyone else before. Secrets that they had previously kept buried within, hidden not only from their closest friends and family, but also somewhat concealed from themselves. Truths that they had not yet dared to voice previously, but that they found themselves spilling to someone that they had only met an hour ago. They were virtually strangers, yet it was like they shared a connection of years upon years.

Sara had never felt like this before.

After a while, Leonie stopped where she stood.

“What is it?” Sara asked.

“Are you hungry?” Leonie asked.

She shrugged. “I could eat, I suppose.”

Leonie smiled. “Follow me, then.”

Grabbing her hand tightly in her own, Leonie pulled Sara through the streets of Berlin. Streets that Sara had thought herself to be familiar with, but yet found herself getting lost, mercy to only the pulling of Leonie’s arm.

Eventually, they found themselves standing outside of a small bakery on a street that wasn’t all to busy. It was tucked away in smaller nook in the building it was in, barely visible. Sara wondered how they stayed in business.

“Are they even still open?” Sara asked, taking note of the darkness that laid behind the shops sole window.

Leonie shook her head. “They aren’t, but they have a baker in there twenty-four hours a day. Lucky for you, I know who tonight’s night baker is.”

Reaching forward, Leonie knocked in an intricate pattern that had to be practiced. If this was actually a drug den, Sara was going to be seriously pissed at her own apparent lack of judgement.

A dark-skinned man that was probably about their age opened the door and smiled widely. “Leonie! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She smiled and stepped forward to hug him. “Hi, Sam! It’s been awhile.”

After she released him, he nodded toward Sara. “And who’s this pretty thing?”

“This is Sara, a friend of one of my roommates,” she said to him before turning toward her and gesturing toward Sam. “This is Sam. We go way back but the short of it is we went to high school together and we almost slept together when I was denying stuff to myself but then I cried and he was actually super nice about it.”

“I mean I was cheating on my girlfriend anyway,” he said.

Leonie nodded. “Yeah, he has an absolutely terrible boyfriend to every girl he’s ever dated. He is a decent friend, though, and he’s one of the night bakers here. During the days he goes to culinary school.”

“I’m going to open up the hottest restaurant in town one day,” Sam boasted. “I don’t exactly know what we’ll serve yet, but the vibe there is going to be hella chill and there will be live music every night.”

She smiled politely. “Sounds nice.”

“He likes to dream big but doesn’t know anything about business,” Leonie said, rolling her eyes. “His best friend is studying law, so hopefully he can help keep the place afloat.”

He pushed her lightly. “Don’t listen to Leonie. I can handle my shit all on my own without a babysitter.”

“Anyway,” Leonie said slowly. “We’re hungry. What do you have in the throw away basket.”

“The throw away basket?” Sara asked.

“When baked goods go stale, we’re supposed to throw them away, but when I work I take the extras and either bring them home, distribute them to friends, or look for people who might need them in the morning,” Sam explained.

“That’s awfully nice of you,” she said.

Leonie rolled her eyes. “Don’t give him too much credit. He takes most of it for himself. Any charity is borne solely of convenience and random guilt.”

Sam gestured to a basket filled with bread and pastries. “Thanks to that comment, you’re paying full price for those, Leonie. Or double, actually. It’s our after hours price. Sara, however, may take anything and everything she might like free of charge.”

Leonie crossed her arms over her chest and gave Sam a fierce looked.

He gulped before forcing a smile. “I’m only joking. Both of you can take whatever. Hurry up, though. I have to get to work so that my boss isn’t on my ass tomorrow morning about productivity.”

“Thanks, Sam!” Leonie said with a bright smile, grabbing two chocolate croissants out of the baskets and handing one to Sara before grabbing her wrist and dragging her out the door, scarcely allowing her a moment to wave goodbye to Sam on the way out.

“He seems nice,” Sara remarked as they got back out onto the street.

Leonie shrugged. “I mean, I guess. He’s not exactly the best, most trustworthy guy in Berlin, but he’s very loyal in his friendships and I can respect that.”

“For sure,” she replied.

As they walked, Sara spared a glance down at her hand, which was clasped with Leonie’s. She wasn’t exactly sure when they had gone from Leonie holding her wrist to actually holding hands, but they did. Something about their hands being clasped together just felt right, and Sara couldn’t help but smile to herself.

“I can let go if you’d like,” Leonie said to her quietly, noticing Sara’s glance.

“No,” Sara said, probably all too quickly. “It’s nice.”

Leonie smiled at that and they continued their slow pace down the now quieting streets of Berlin.

The next place they stopped was at a pond in a small park that Sara didn’t even know existed. She supposed that even someone who lived an entire lifetime in a place wouldn’t truly know every nook and cranny of it, thus was the wondrousness of the world.

It wasn’t large by any means and it hardly blocked out the sounds of the city, but the way the moonlight reflected off the pond and the branches of the trees swayed lightly in the cold nighttime breeze made a sensation of peacefulness wash over her.

“This place is beautiful,” Sara said softly as the two of them sat in the soft grass, facing the pond.

Leonie nodded. “I go here when I’m struggling thinking of an idea for a project or I’m having relationship issues or I just need to  _ think _ .”

“Why are we here now?” she asked next

She shrugged. “A lot to reflect on, I suppose.”

“How did you find it?” Sara asked, understanding that Leonie probably didn’t want her to push the issue. “I’ve been through this general area of the city once or twice, but I’ve never seen this place before.”

“My ex-girlfriend, the first girl I dated, actually, lives around here somewhere,” Leonie told her. “Well, at least she did last time I spoke to her. It’s been a while. But, anyway, we met online and everything was great for a while. It was hard for me, to meet girls back home. The only other girls at my school that were out happened to be dating one another. I think they came out together, actually. That’s beside the point, though. So I met this girl and it was online, through social media and we really got along and everything was great. She visited me a few times before I came everything and we actually worked just as well in real life as we did via text.”

“And something changed?” Sara guessed.

She nodded. “Then I came here and her mother absolutely  _ hated  _ me. She treated me like garbage the entire weekend and my ex never once stood up with me. Once or twice she even laughed alongside her mom. I tried to talk to her about it and she basically said her mom was more important to me which I  _ get _ but that’s no excuse to sit around and watch anyone get treated like shit. And then she broke up with me.”

“It sounds like you’re much better off without her,” Sara commented.

“Oh, trust me, I am,” Leonie agreed. “Anyway, after we broke up I was crying and wandering the streets of this city that I didn’t really know and I tried to call Sam, since he was already going to school out here by then, but he was at work and he didn’t respond and I had absolutely no idea how to get to the tram station even though it’s not even that  _ far _ because I was too upset to think straight. And then I happened upon this park and it was empty and I just sat here for a moment to gather my breath. I thought about everything that happened and I cried and I cried and then I picked up a stone and I whipped it at the pond. It skipped exactly three times and then all of a sudden I just knew that I was going to be fine, that everything was going to turn out okay. My first girlfriend wasn’t going to be my last and my second one probably wouldn’t be either. I was going to find love one day and I was going to be an artist and everything was going to be alright. All I had to do was get through one bad moment, and then the next and whatever came after, but that’s what they were: moments. There were too many good things to occur in the times between to be so down about one stupid girl that had no awareness of what was right and wrong.”

“And here you are.”

Leonie smiled. “And here I am.”

Sara grabbed two stones off the ground, tossing one to Leonie before pushing up onto her feet. “Shall we?”

She laughed and followed suit. “I think we shall.”  
They stayed there for a while, skipping stones across the tiny pond and laughing. This was one of those great moments, the ones that made every other moment worth surviving.

* * *

They spent most of the remainder of the night wandering the city streets and taking in the beauty of Berlin at night. They ventured through the busy streets like a pair of tourists, stopping to watch some street performers and take in some of the more popular sights, but they also acted like they had lived there for their entire lives, hitting up a small kebab shop and wandering down quiet streets, taking in the largely unseen beauty of the parts of the city that few seemed to consider in their visits.

As they talked and laughed and cried, Sara began to realize that their exploration of the city was similar to how they were learning about one another.

On one hand, they had only just met and that meant that good portion of what they talked about were things that were on the surface, the things that you’d tell just about anyone so they can get to know you. The parts of your personality that you’d like people to see exemplified to create a persona that wasn’t exactly the truth of oneself, but was what people wanted to see.

But every once in a while they delved deeper than that and let one another see the parts that weren’t necessarily on display, which truly did make Sara feel like she’d known Leonie for forever. Because they went deeper than that display that they’d put on for just about anyone, deeper than even one would go with most of their friends. These deeper conversations showed the good, the bad, and the ugly of someone but, most importantly, they showed what made you a  _ person _ .

The night was drawing to a close and Sara knew it, from the time on the clock and the fact that the general direction that they had been walking for the past fifteen or so minutes was in the direction of their apartments. She was terrified that their night of forever would end and then they’d never see each other again, which was probably entirely unrealistic since their respective roommates were in love. Still, she was scared that after the night drew to a close whatever was happening between them would end abruptly and live on as only a memory of one late night in the streets of Berlin and she didn’t know what she was supposed to do about that.

Sara knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to seal her night with Leonie with a kiss, but she didn’t dare take that step. What if she didn’t want that? Besides, it was obvious that kissing would be rushing everything. Probably.

She was still mentally searching for answers when she noticed that she could see the window of her flat from where they were walking along the canal. This must be the spot that she watched every day.

“Can we stop?” Sara asked quietly.

“My feet hurt,” Leonie complained. “And we’re almost back.”

“We can sit,” she suggested, leading the way and sitting on the edge of the canal, her feet not quite touching the water.

Leonie sat beside her. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sara said with a nod. “It’s just this place- well, I guess it’s kind of special to me? It’s kind of stupid though.”

“I doubt it’s stupid,” she replied. “Will you tell me about it? Unless it’s something too personal.”

“I can see this spot from my bedroom,” she explained. “I watch it for a few minutes every day. I guess on the surface level I enjoy seeing the people and the ducks go by, but it’s become something bigger. I like how the canal is manmade, how it’s a path people have chosen for themselves. It kind of ties into our conversation about fate, I suppose. Your life isn’t laid out for you, right? You get to choose what you want. I always kind of thought destiny was a load of crap until…”

A hand brushed over Sara’s. “Until what?”

She turned toward Leonie, taking in her bright eyes that seemed to sparkle in the moonlight. “Until now.”  
Leonie smiled softly. “Well, maybe it’s a mixture of the two. Fate can draw you towards an outcome, but you still can choose to take it or leave it. If the outcome is bad, you can take action and change it. And, if it’s good, nothing is really going to happen unless you make the choice to do something about it. So, what is it?”

Sara took a deep breath, leaning toward Leonie and pressing her lips together. Because, tonight, she chose her. She chose the small private smiles, the deep honest conversations, the secrets that they barely told themselves, the loud laughter that they didn’t care who heard. Kissing Leonie was choosing not just to let tonight pass her by, but to promise to have more of these nights in the future, as well as different night.

Logically, it shouldn’t work. You don’t just meet somebody and fall in love, and Sara wasn’t foolish enough to believe she  _ was  _ in love, at least not yet. But she knew she liked Leonie a lot already, more than she had ever really liked anyone before, and she was willing to put in the effort to say fuck not rushing things and to make it happen.

When they parted, they sat there quietly for a moment or ten, gazing into one another’s eyes and just  _ feeling _ .

“I chose you,” Sara said finally.

A smile blossomed across Leonie’s face. “I noticed.”

“Do you think the boys ever went on their date?” she asked.

Leonie laughed. “Knowing them, probably not. If they did, I doubt it was anything like this.”

“How will any other date ever live up to this one?” Sara asked. “And this wasn’t even a  _ date _ . Not originally, at least.”

“I don’t know, but you only have until Thursday to figure it out,” she replied.

Sara blinked for a moment. “Huh?”

“That’s when you’re taking me to dinner,” Leonie said, climbing up to her feet and pressing a kiss to Sara’s cheek. “Now I need to go sleep otherwise I might just pass out in this canal, and that doesn’t bode well for anyone.”

They waved goodbye as Leonie took off in the direction of her apartment.

Once she was out of sight, Sara gingerly placed her fingers on her cheek where Leonie had kissed her before moving them to her lips.

Sara had never felt like this before. It like she was part of her own most cherished memory, but that memory hadn’t quite finished happening yet. She felt a nostalgia for a moment that wasn’t over and she wasn’t sure exactly when or if it would end.

She hoped that it would last forever and didn’t care if that made her naïve.

Whether they come by fate or by choice or by a combination of the two, some things were worth holding on to.


End file.
